WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon is seeking $200 billion in additional funds for the Iran war, a sizable amount that is certain to be met with questions from Congress, which would need to approve any new money.

The department sent the request to the White House, according to a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private information. Asked about the figure at a press conference Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not directly confirm the amount, saying it could change.

“It takes money to kill bad guys,” Hegseth said.

But he said “we’re going back to Congress and our folks there to ensure that we’re properly funded.”

Big price tag faces scrutiny over war

It’s an extraordinarily high number and comes on top of extra funding the Defense Department already received last year in President Donald Trump’s big tax cuts bill. Such a request would need to be approved by Congress, and it is not at all clear such spending would have political support. The nation’s debt has surged past a record $39 trillion.

Congress has been bracing for a new spending request but it is not clear the White House has transmitted the request for consideration. Lawmakers have not authorized the war, and Congress is showing growing unease with the military operation’s scope and strategy.

The new funding request was first reported by The Washington Post.

Trump said the administration is asking for the money for other reasons beyond Iran.

“This is a very volatile world,” the president said from the Oval Office. He said the emergency spending would be a “very small price to pay” to ensure the nation’s military stays in top shape.

While the House and Senate are controlled by the president’s Republican Party many of the more conservative lawmakers are also fiscal hawks, with little political appetite for big spending, on military operations or other matters. Most Democrats are likely to reject such a request and demand more detailed plans from the Trump administration about the U.S. military goals and objectives.

Rep. Ken Calvert, the Republican chair of the House subcommittee with oversight over defense spending, said he was already advocating for a supplemental spending bill to allow the Pentagon to replenish munitions.

“That was going to happen, and now we have this conflict with some additional costs. So, that’s where we’re at,” Calvert of California said Thursday.

“I know there are peripheral issues out there that people are concerned about, but right now, this is about our national security and it’s important that we get this done,” he said.

But Rep. Betty McCollum of Minnesota, the ranking Democrat on the House subcommittee with oversight over defense spending, said the president has taken the U.S. into a war without coming to Congress and she’s demanding more details.

“This is not going to be a rubber stamp for the president of the United States,” McCollum said.

She said Congress is still waiting for the administration to explain where it would be spending the additional $150 billion funding that went to the Pentagon through Trump’s tax and spending cut bill. It’s also waiting on the president’s budget request for this year.

“I’m not writing blank checks to the Department of Defense,” McCollum said.

Negotiations ahead on a final package

It all points to a monumental battle ahead in Congress over any new Pentagon spending that would almost certainly need support from Republicans and Democrats in a bipartisan package to push past objections toward approval.

The requested amount would be a hefty boost to the Pentagon’s annual budget, which Congress approved at more than $800 billion for the current fiscal year.

That’s on top of some $150 billion that Congress gave the Defense Department in last year’s tax cuts bill, much of it for specific projects and overall upgrades to the Pentagon’s operations.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has projected that the federal government will run a $1.9 trillion annual deficit this year, and that’s before adding any spending done through a supplemental bill.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said it’s a “dangerous time” and “we have to adequately fund defense.”

Asked whether he supported the amount, Johnson said he has not seen the details, but “I support what’s needed to ensure that the American people remain safe.”

While some of the military’s biggest champions on Capitol Hill have welcomed new spending as a way to replenish munitions stockpiles and upgrade the U.S. defense capabilities in the face of emerging threats, others will certainly point to health care and other domestic needs that they view as more important priorities.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said of the $200 billion price tag: “It’s outrageous.”

To muscle a package to passage, Republican leaders could either try to go it alone through an arduous budget process, or cut deals with Democrats on other priorities that would likely balloon the overall price tag.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., signaled the negotiations ahead.

“Ultimately we’re going to have negotiations with the White House on an exact amount,” Scalise said. “We’re not at that point yet.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve kept its key interest rate unchanged Wednesday and Chair Jerome Powell highlighted the increasingly uncertain outlook for the U.S. economy and inflation in the wake of the Iran war, suggesting the Fed could stand pat for an extended period.

Fed policymakers maintained their forecast for an additional rate cut this year, but in a news conference, Powell suggested that the central bank remains concerned about inflation that was still stubbornly elevated even before the conflict’s impact on gas prices.

“The thing I really want to emphasize is, nobody knows,” Powell said, referring to the impact of the Iran war. “The economic effects could be bigger, they could be smaller, they could be much smaller, they could be much bigger. We just don’t know.”

Powell said the central bank would need to see further progress in the price of goods declining as the impact of tariffs fades before cutting rates further. The Fed reduced its short-term rate three times last year to 3.6%, before pausing in January and on Wednesday.

“The rate forecast is conditional on the performance of the economy, so if we don’t see that progress then you won’t see the rate cut,” Powell said.

Investors were discouraged by such comments, sending share prices sharply lower. The broad S&P 500 index dropped 1.4%.

Fed officials “are aware they’ve missed their inflation target for five years, and they do not want to continue to miss it indefinitely,” said Nathan Sheets, chief economist at Citi and a former top economist at the Fed. Inflation, according to the Fed’s preferred measure, was 2.8% in January, up from 2.3% nearly a year ago. It’s also above the Fed’s target of 2%.

At the press conference, Powell did clarify a key question about the Fed’s future: He said he has “no intention” of leaving the central bank until an investigation into his congressional testimony about the Fed’s building renovation is dropped.

Last Friday, a judge threw out a pair of subpoenas that the Justice Department had issued to the Fed, dealing a blow to the investigation. But U.S. Attorney Jeannine Pirro has said she will appeal the ruling.

Powell’s term as Fed chair is scheduled to end on May 15, and President Donald Trump has nominated a former top Fed official, Kevin Warsh, as his replacement. Warsh’s confirmation has been delayed because key Republican senators are opposed to the DOJ probe.

Once the investigation is resolved and even after Warsh is confirmed, Powell could elect to stay on the board to finish his term as a Fed governor, which lasts until January 2028. But he told reporters he had not yet decided whether to do so.

Powell also maintained a largely optimistic outlook for the economy, pointing out that in recent years it has been hit with numerous shocks — tariffs, the Fed’s own rate hikes in 2022 and 2023, the aftermath of the pandemic — and has avoided recession all along.

“The U.S. economy has been doing really well through a lot of challenges,” Powell said. “It’s been amazing to see.”

In the Fed’s quarterly economic projections, also released Wednesday, officials only modestly raised their forecasts for inflation, and now expect it will end this year at 2.7%, up from their December forecast but slightly below the 2.8% it reached in January. They expect core inflation, which excludes the volatile food and energy categories, to also finish the year at 2.7%.

Fed officials slightly boosted their outlook for growth this year and expected unemployment to stay unchanged at 4.4%.

Tim Duy, chief economist at SGH Macro, said the forecasts were essentially “stale” as policymakers avoided fully taking into account the impacts of the Iran war on the economy.

The Fed considers core prices a better measure of longer-run inflation. Consumer prices will spike higher in the coming months as gas prices have soared, but those increases could unwind by the end of the year, particularly if the conflict ends soon.

One Fed official, governor Stephen Miran, dissented in favor of a quarter-point cut. Miran was appointed by President Donald Trump last September.

Gas prices jumped Wednesday to a nationwide average of $3.84 a gallon, according to AAA, up 92 cents from a month ago. The increase will push inflation much higher in March, but core inflation, since it excludes gas, could be much less affected.

Typically, the Fed would look past a supply shock like the disruption in oil supplies from the Middle East and its impact on inflation. Once it ends, any inflation it produces may fall back, without the Fed having to raise rates. As a result, the Fed could leave rates unchanged — or even cut them to boost weak hiring.

Even before the Iran war, problems had cropped up in both the inflation and jobs data, putting the Fed in a tight spot. Prices rose more quickly in January than in recent months, according to the Fed’s preferred measure, with inflation excluding food and energy reaching 3.1% compared with a year earlier. That is little changed from where it was two years ago, a sign that prices are still rising at a stubbornly elevated pace.

Yet hiring has also stumbled. Businesses and other employers shed 92,000 jobs in February, the government reported earlier this month, an unexpectedly weak showing that followed an encouraging gain of 130,000 in January. The unemployment rate ticked higher to a still-low 4.4% from 4.3%.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Pam Bondi was subpoenaed Tuesday to answer questions from Congress about the Justice Department’s sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and the agency’s handling of millions of files related to the disgraced financier.

Bondi was ordered to appear for a deposition on April 14 by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform after a vote earlier this month that was supported by five Republicans.

The Justice Department’s failure to fend off the subpoena from the Republican-led committee underscores widespread discontent among President Donald Trump’s own base over Bondi’s management of the review and release of a trove of documents from the criminal investigation into Epstein.

“The Committee has questions regarding the Department of Justice’s handling of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and his associates and its compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act,” Rep. James Comer, the Republican chairman, said in a letter to Bondi.

“As Attorney General, you are directly responsible for overseeing the Department’s collection, review, and determinations regarding the release of files pursuant to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and the Committee therefore believes that you possess valuable insight into these efforts,” he wrote.

The department on Tuesday called the subpoena “completely unnecessary.” Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche were expected to provide a private briefing Wednesday to members of the committee.

“Lawmakers have been invited to view the unredacted files for themselves at the Department of Justice, and the Attorney General has always made herself available to speak directly with members of Congress,” the department said in a statement. The agency said it looks forward to “continuing to provide policymakers with the facts.”

The Trump administration has faced constant political headaches since the rollout of the files began in December, with critics accusing the department of hiding certain documents and over-redacting files. In other cases, victims have slammed the department for sloppy redactions that revealed their sensitive information.

The Justice Department has fiercely defended its handling of the Epstein files, saying it worked as quickly and diligently as possible to review and release millions of documents required under the law. The department has denied any accusations that it used redactions to protect certain people or improperly withheld certain materials. And it has said it immediately worked to fix any redaction errors raised by victims.